Sometimes You're Right
by Feddlefew
Summary: No one but Raz felt that the brain stealing incident had loses ends. And, you know what? He just happened to be right. Post game, T for swearing and violence, cannon pairings.
1. Ch1: Of Crispin and Loboto

AN:

Hi there everyone who's using their precious time to read this! This is my first attempt a writing Psychonauts fan-fiction, so hopefully it isn't a pice of crap. Just to warn people, I have incredibly bad spelling, so if you see any lingering spelling errors, please let me know about them. 

Reviews and Constrictive Criticism are appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Psychonauts. What where you thinking?

Before I forget: Brackets like this **[ ] **means that there's psych emphasis on the text. Like if someone is using _suggestion_ or their thoughts and speech when disembodied.

_)(_

**Ch1: Of Loboto and Crispin**

Raz leaned back in his seat, eyes half closed, listening to the soft mummer of Oleander, Sasha and Milla discussing something and the hum of the jet. Lili was already asleep in the seat across from him, her head resting on the shoulder of her father, Truman Zanotto. Raz, too, was exhausted from the rescue attempt, but he didn't want to sleep. Not with the one person who he had dreamed about talking to for years, the Grand Head of the Psychonauts, sitting a mere four feat away from him.

He took a cautious glance up at Mr. Zanotto's face. The man was fast asleep with his head resting on his shoulder, unshaved, and smeared with dirt. His suit was rumpled and torn from being forcibly thrown over a barbed wire fence, and his hair, which must have at one point been neatly groomed, was a tangled mess. A single nettle leaf was still caught in a snarl just above his right ear.

Realizing that formality and appearance weren't even close to important at the moment, Raz garbed his back pack and began to dig through it.

There was a granola bar in there somewhere and, by all things psychic and sane, he was going to find it and eat it before he passed out from exhaustion.

As he searched for the illusive snack, his hand brushed against something unfamiliar. What he pulled out surprised him.

It was a necklace of some sort, made from a single deep arrowhead held to a leather cord by a some wire. The arrowhead was charged with energy, making it glow slightly. Something, some strange impulse, told Raz to put it on as he looked at it. He hesitated.

For one thing, he couldn't remember picking it up from anywhere, and he certainly would remember picking up something like that.

Raz glanced around. No one was paying any attention to him at all, because the where asleep or hotly debating something that Raz didn't feel like eaves dropping in on. Without anyone noticing, he slipped the necklace on and tucked it under his uniform.

A few minutes later Raz, having finally located and devoured his granola bar, fell fast asleep.

He had the strangest dreams...

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

The surface of Lake was still; as perfectly smooth as glass and black as the night sky above. A lone crow perched on a small tree that jutted out of a crevasse on the lake's rocky shore, scanning the water below. The crow was a wretched old thing, blind in one eye and missing several of its feathers. It knew something was watching it. It just knew it. It could feel the feathers on the back of its neck standing on end.

Of course, with the lake in the mirror-like state that it was in, the crow could only see it's own reflection staring back from amongst the reeds.

A second crow landed next to the first; a far younger, healthier looking one. They regarded each other for a few moments. Then the first crow let out a caw of indifference, and together the two crows turned to watch a burning tower off in the distance. A second later another crow joined and two became three.

And then another.

And another.

And another.

Before long the combined weight of fifty odd crows, all intently watching the now rapid disintegration of Thorny Towers Asylum, had bent the tree enough that a good, strong branch hung within two feet of the water.

The old crow was now, understandably, very, very nervous: it happened to be sitting on that branch. It shifted from foot to foot, still feeling a watching pair of eyes somewhere below. The crow glanced down once more, just to be certain that there really was nothing in the water.

The crow's eyes grew to the size of quarters. A soft breeze had disturbed the surface of the water, allowing a brief glimpse at what lay just beneath. It (the crow) let out a screech of terror, then rocketed off of the tree and into the night faster than anyone could have thought physically possible for something so decrepit.

The resulting chittering laughter from the other crows was abruptly cut short when a hand shot out of the lake and seized the branch, exactly where the old crow had been a moment before, in a vice-like grip. The crows immediately took off, yanking the creature out off the water as the tree sprang back into place.

A certain blue-skinned dentist chuckled dryly as he watched the panicking flock of crows.

"Fly away, little birds." He muttered around the hollow reed clenched firmly between his teeth. "You won't be picking the flesh off of these bones tonight."

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

Fifteen minutes later Caligosto Loboto lay, shivering, across the top of a particularly large and flat rock. Cold, hungry, exhausted, and soaked to the bone, he began to take note of his various injuries.

His biggest problem, as far as he could tell at the moment, was the loss of his robotic arm. It had been ripped off just below the shoulder, leaving only a few pieces of twisted metal and wires attached.

"Must have happened during that nasty little fall. Lets see... Did I try grabbing something? Or did it get caught?" he mused. "I can't seem to remember."

Loboto groaned and forced his aching body into a sitting position. The shredded, soaking wet remains of his lab coat hung limp around his body and did nothing to protect him from the cold The hideous green and yellow floral-patterned shower cap of his was missing, letting the mop of jet-black hair on his head hanging limply about his face. The lens of his left "eye" was cracked, like most of his ribs on the same side of his body. The ribs didn't bother him, he'd broken multiple ribs on several different previous occasions, but he was having a hard time seeing through the broken lens.

And, most unusually, his face was set with a grim expression.

After a short rest, Loboto painfully hauled himself to his feet. The pain didn't bother him much, it never had and, most likely, never would. As far as he was concerned, it was his connection to reality; a reminder that he was awake and alive and not slowly drowning in a deep coma on the lake floor.

Reaching over, he grasped the remains of his arm, twisting and turning until the mangled peace of metal came free from the mechanisms in the socket.

It was sad, really. He could clearly remembered how he had made it from what little he could find around the asylum. He'd lost the first one, which had been a bit more natural looking, just a few days after he had first been brought to the asylum. Come to think of it, why had they let him keep that first one so long? They only confiscated it after he'd used it to attack an orderly.

That day Loboto had been out in the court yard, enjoying the sun and the birds, when he'd over heard a conversation between two of the orderlies. One of them was complaining about a tooth ache, of all things.

Needless to say, Loboto was on the orderly before anyone could react. The razor sharp claws sliced clean through his strait jacket and the orderly's gums. By the time the help had arrived, Loboto had located and extracted the problem tooth, and had returned to bird watching. He spent the rest of the day in solitary confinement, and the next morning the asylum staff demanded that the arm be removed. Said it was a "safety risk", of course. The look in their eyes when he'd simply detached it! They must have thought they would need to have it _surgically_ removed.

The second one hadn't been as good. Sure, it looked more menacing, but he'd been forced to make it shorter than he'd liked because of limited materials. But an arm was better than no arm at all, especially after last summer's modifications. Sneezing powder made brain extraction so much easier.

He let out a sigh, before pocketing the small scrap of metal. He needed a souvenir, a little reminder of what happened here. He stood there for a time, swaying slightly on unsteady legs, watching his home for the past fifty years burn, before finally turning and limping off into the woods. The cave Loboto planned to meet with Crispin at was three or four miles away from the asylum as the crow flies, and now he had to evade any search parties that were out. They wouldn't be looking for him, he was "dead" as far as they knew, but Crispin was still unaccounted for and considered to be dangerous.

Then the world blurred....

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

.... And a new vision began.

Crispin stumbled over the rigid, darting from tree to tree, telekinetic bear in hot pursuit. The bears always had a harder time killing you if they didn't have a clear line of sight, and his erratic path was the only thing keeping him from being ripped to pieces. He could just barely make out the entrance to the cave through his nearly blind eyes. It was a dark blur on the cliff wall only fifty feat away.

But the bear behind him was gaining fast, and he didn't think he was going to make it....

He could see someone emerging from the entrance of the cave, someone tall and skinny and wearing white- yes, that was Loboto.

Crispin could sense his employer's mood: brooding, not so much angry as contemplative. It was an acquired skill, necessary for survival around a man who would cheerfully perform horribly painful experiments on you and or rip out your teeth and brain.

Suddenly Crispin felt the grasp of a great telekinetic claw on his head and realized that his feat where pedaling uselessly in the air. He was turned around to face the bear, which slowed down to a leisurely pace.

It was savoring his terror as it slowly grew closer and closer and closer...

"HEEEELP MEEEEEE!" The ugly little man screamed.

The bear was still coming....

Crispin panicked. If Loboto was in a bad mood, then he might just stand by and watch while his fateful elevator operator of many years was torn to shreds, even if it wasn't really his style.

No, Loboto preferred to strap his victims down nice and tight, to "forget" to administer anesthetic, to talk and laugh and joke with them while they screamed and sobbed and pleaded. Crispin had, before his vision had deteriorated, stood beside Loboto during these events, cackling with glee and passing wicked tools to his employer.

Then the bear stopped, beady little eyes growing to the size of saucers. It stared over Crispin's shoulder, terrified, before It turned and fled. The telekinetic claw which clutched Crispin's oversize head dissolved in an instant, and he hit the ground with a thud. He lay there, stunned, staring up at the sky.

It was a beautiful shade of pink: sunrise.

Then a shadow fell across him and he saw Loboto's blurry form loomed over him. Crispin squinted up at the man's face. Loboto wasn't smiling. Not good.

"What took you so long?" Crispin started to answer, but Loboto cut him off. "Not the bear, Crispin, it just made you run faster. Did you run into any pesky psychics on the way here? Like, say, a little boy with goggles on his head?"

"N-n-no s-sir." Crispin stammered. This was bad. Very, very, very bad. If Loboto thought that he could betray their location...

"Stand up! You know I don't like you groveling at my feat."

Crispin carefully picked himself off the ground and stood, trembling, before Loboto. Loboto knelt down so that Crispin's budging eyes met Loboto's robotic ones. The silence was deafening as they watched each other, as even the birds in the trees had stopped chirping.

Then Crispin noticed his employer's missing arm.

"Sir! Your claw is missing! And your eye is cracked too! Are you hurt?"

For the fist time all night, Loboto smiled. It started small, just a slight upward twitch of the corners of his mouth. But it kept growing. Black lips stretched and curled before parting, revealing well-kept even white teeth.

The familiar ear to ear grin calmed Crispin. He relaxed and managed to force his fat lips into a smile.

Suddenly, Loboto's hand shot forward, grabbed Crispin by his greasy blue hair, and yanked his head back.

"How did you get those bruises on your neck, Crispin?" Loboto inquired. He leaned forward to examine them. "They're hand shaped. Has someone been trying to kill you again?"

"Yes!" Crispin gasped. He tried to twist out of Loboto's grasp, to no avail.

"Stop struggling. You're hurting yourself. Now, were they wearing... Goggles?"

"No! No! It was Fred! Fred Bonaparte- the former head orderly! He tried to strangle me after I let you in to the elevator, and I had to play dead to escape!"

Loboto's head snapped up so he could look directly into Crispin's eyes. Loboto's brow creased.

"Crispin, I didn't use the elevator last night."

The color drained from Crispin's face.

"You... Didn't?"

"I spent the entire night up in my lab. When you let me into the elevator, did I seem to be shorter than usual?"

"Well, yes, but-" Crispin stopped when he put the pieces together. That kid who had bugged him last night, trying to ride the elevator. He'd been wearing something on his head: two shiny orange disks, held together with some kind of strap.

In other words, Goggles.

'_Shit... Now I'm going to die.'_ Crispin thought

"I'm sorry sir. I should have known that the child wasn't you and should have alerted you to his presence immediately. Please don't kill me."

"That's all right." Loboto released Crispin, who fell over. "This mess we're in is my fault. I caught him sneaking around my lab a few times, trying to take the brains out of their jars or otherwise being a nuisance. I should have cut open his little head the first time, taken out that lovely brain, and put it somewhere nice and safe. Like the Tank."

"So, all forgiven, sir?" Crispin said as he picked himself up off the ground.

"No. You need to have your eyes checked out. Now, if you would just step over here.... Ha Ha! Relax, Crispin, you look like you just saw a painful death in your future! Can't take a joke this morning, now can you? I can't do anything like that with only one arm. But I do have an old friend in a nearby town who might be able to help us with our problems. He's a brilliant man, I think you'll get along at least _reasonably_ well."

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

A sudden jolt woke Raz. He stat there, blinking, for a few moments, before he released that he was staring into Lili's eyes.

"Wake up, sleepy head." She said, her face just barley not touching his. "The jet has landed."

Raz hastily unfastened his seat belt and jumped out off of the seat.

"Did you're dad...?" He said, glancing over at Mr. Zanotto, who was talking to Sasha.

"See you drooling in you sleep? Yes." She smiled playfully, holding out a handkerchief.

He grabbed the handkerchief, and, turning very red as he did so, wiped the drool off of his face.

As they walked down the stairs off of the jet, Raz felt something brush against the edge of his mind.

"Hey, Lili, did you just try to probe my mind?"

"No. You probably just imagined it." She looked at him for a moment. "Is something bothering you?"

"Well, yes. I had the weirdest dream..."


	2. Ch2: Dream a Little Nightmare

AN: 

First off, thank you for the review **bipolarity**. That made my day.

Once again, if anyone finds spelling errors, PLEASE TELL ME. I can't fix them if I don't know that their there. I do have someone proof reading, but sometimes things are missed. Some errors in the last chapter have been fixed.

Anyhoo, this chapter was fun to write.

_)(_

**Ch2: Dream a Little Nightmare**

Somewhere, deep under the vast expanse of the New Mexican Desert, is Psychonauts' Headquarters. The facility is a sprawling expanse of twisting corridors and rooms, so obviously unplanned that even the very materials from which they are made vary wildly from one area to the next. The oldest sections, made of brick and concrete, are located closest to the surface. The cold, stark metal hallways of the latest expansion are located far enough from the entrance that a tram system had to be built so that agents could get to their many meetings on time.

In speaking of which, on the 23rd of June, 2007, somewhere down in that subterranean labyrinth, Agent Razputin Aquato held an emergency meeting in his office.

Space was so tight in the cubical sized room that there was only just enough to fit all four of its occupants. The only light came from a small lamp competing for desk space, and losing, with fast food wrapper and stacks of paper. Proudly displayed above the desk hung a certificate proclaiming that Raz's had passes the entrance exam to become an agent (barely, because he'd "failed to follow protocol during the hostage scenario"). On the grey walls were a handful of photographs, mostly depicting Raz and Lili hanging out together, in cheap plastic and metal frames.

Raz sat in his standard issue office chair, facing agents Oleander, Milla, and Sasha. The boy, like his hair, had grown an inch or two since the day he'd first joined the Psychonauts, and his uniform was still slightly too big for him. At the moment he was carefully planing his next move, choosing what he was going to say and how he was going to say it. The other agents were being nicer than most people would have been, waiting patently for him to speak while he sat there and twiddled his thumbs.

Okay, Oleander was glaring impatiently at him, but the others weren't.

Why was he holding a meeting at 6 in the morning? After that first dream-vision... thing... that he'd had just over two years ago, he had been plagued by nightmares involving Dr. Loboto. At first, it had happened only once and awhile, but lately.....

Almost every night now he would wake in a cold sweat, head reeling, with the impression that someone was delicately probing away at the edges of his mind. The nightmares would always start out like a normal dream, but then everything would fade out, replace by visions of that crazed madman inflicting serious injuries on him with all manners of dental equipment. He'd not had a good night's sleep in days and was reaching his wit's end. He needed to tell _someone _about it.

'_Might as well get this over with.'_ He thought. Then he cleared his throat.

"I keep having these nightmares. It's dark. Really dark. I can't see anything. I'm sitting in a chair, like the kind they have in a dentist's office, and I'm strapped down, and I can't move my head or anything. Then the light comes on, and Dr. Loboto is standing over me, grinning like the madman he is. He's covered in blood. Like, completely covered in blood, not just a little. He starts talking to me, but I can't figure out what he's saying, because his voice is all distorted and stuff." Raz paused. "He sounded like he was miles away and underwater."

Sasha raised an eyebrow.

"Anything else happen?" Sasha asked.

"Well, most of the time he takes out this drill and slowly starts moving it towards my head. Then I wake up."

"I'm assuming he turns it on?" The Coach grunted.

"Yes, he does. It makes this horrible high-pitched whining noise." Raz said, still fidgeting.

"Well, I don't see why this had to be an emergency meeting if all you wanted to do was tell us about a few bad dreams." The little man grumbled.

"I know." But last night, something else happened. Instead of pushing the drill through my head, he stopped and just started laughing. Then he said something, but this time I could here it. He said _'That look on your face is priceless.'_."

Raz looked down at his feet. How was he supposed to say this? They'd think he was crazy.

'_Spit it out Raz. It can't be that bad...' _

"I just have this gut feeling that he's still alive."

Raz nervously squirmed in his chair a little. The adults just stood there, staring at him.

Coach Oleander was the first to speak.

"I for one am glad to say that there is no way in he-"

"Morry!" Milla snapped.

"-ck that Loboto survived that fall."

Raz glared. "You didn't find his body when you dredged the lake. The only things you ever found were his metal claw and that stupid shower cap! For all you know he could have lived. He could be out there somewhere right now, ripping the brains of innocent people right out of their heads while he plots to take over-"

Oleander held up his hand. Raz fell silent.

"Look son, I know that it's very important to pay attention to dreams, especially nightmares. But Loboto is dead. I watched him fall, saw him bounce on the way down. Twice. He's dead, let it go."

"Oh." Raz said glumly.

Satisfied that he had talked some sense into Raz, the coach strutted out of the room on his short little legs. Milla began to follow, but hesitated.

"Don't worry about the dreams darling, you're perfectly safe here. No one who wants to hurt you can reach you while you're surrounded by other agents. Just come to me if you have any more dreams like that, okay?" She said, her voice warm and kind as always.

"I will."

She turned once again to leave. Sasha, who had some how left the room without anyone noticing, collided with her as he walked into the room, nocking his sunglasses askew. They stared at each other for a minute, and Raz couldn't help but to grin a little when he saw how red Sasha's face became.

"Sasha! I'm sorry, I didn't see you leave." Milla said, reaching up and fixing Sasha's sunglasses.

"No, I- I should have been paying more attention to where I was going." Sasha stammered

"No, I should have!"

This went on for about five minutes before they stopped and Milla, still apologizing profusely, left. Finally, Sasha shut the door turned to Raz.

"Razputin, I probably should not give you this...." He swept aside some of the garbage and set a large file on the desk. "But I find that knowing more about a threat, perceived or real, often helps ease the mind."

Raz picked up the file. It was stuffed full of papers and held together by two thick pieces of string. Neatly stenciled across the front in block lettering were the words "CALIGOSTO LOBOTO". Raz's eyes grew wide. Was this really what he thought it was?

"This is Loboto's file? It's huge! I tried to find stuff on him, and could hardly find anything. Did you use some super secret government database which nobody knows about? Or did you spend weeks painstakingly tracking down and interviewing people?"

Raz had always suspected that there was some kind of database that had all kinds of information in it, and no one had ever told him about it. It was frustrating, yes, but he'd known he'd hear about it sooner or later.

"Both. Their wasn't much to be found."

"This isn't a lot?" Raz said, confused. The file he was holding had to weigh at least five pounds!

"You can fill boxes with the files I have on most people. That's all that exists on Dr. Loboto. It seems that most of his records were destroyed when Lake Oblongata was created, and whatever information there was in the asylum was incinerated in the fire, obviously." Sasha turned and looked Raz strait in the eye, or as close to that as possible through his sunglasses. "Read it later, we have somewhere we need to be right now."

Now it was Raz's turn to raise an eyebrow.

"Where?"

"My lab. You need to have a psychological examination done, preferably as soon as possible. These nightmares you are having could be symptoms of fatigue, or possibly work related stress. We can't afford to have another melt down, not so soon after Agent Pascal."

"Oh man. Wait a minute, you were only gone for a second! How did you...?"

Sasha smiled slyly.

"I'll tell you when you're older. Now, if you would follow me..."

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

Hours spent hooked up to a brain tumbler revealed no symptoms of insanity or weaknesses in Raz's mental defenses, and Sasha let him leave. Raz had secretly hoped that something would turn up, even if it did mean a mandatory suspension, because it would have started an investigation. If he was right, and he was almost certain that he was, then it would have lead the Psychonauts strait to Dr. Loboto's front door.

Wherever that might be.

His bunk mate- What was his name, Louis or something?- had already left for his shift by the time Raz had arrived at his tiny room. It was late, around 23 hundred hours, but Raz wasn't tired.

He had research to do.

He climbed up to the top bunk, his bunk, and yanked the privacy curtain shut. After flipping on the reading light, he reached into his messenger bag and pulled out Loboto's file. He hastily slipped the string off it and began to leaf through it, talking to himself the entire time.

"Birth certificate, No..... High school transcript, nope... Loboto was arrested for speeding on his 20th birthday. Well, that's interesting... Collage transcri- Wait a minute. He went to college to become a brain surgeon, then switched to dentistry before completing his degree? Why would he do that? I mean, if he was obsessed with brains and stuff all along... Hey, newspaper clippings...."

Raz picked one of the bigger clippings out. A mugshot of Loboto grinned up at him from the yellowing paper. Whenever this was taken, Loboto had already had both of his eyes... replaced....

Raz shook his head. It was only a picture of the guy, and he was getting the chills just looking at it.

"No! I am not afraid of Loboto! Ok. Got that out of my system. This looks like an article on Loboto's arrest...."

**Madman Responsible for Local Disappearances**

**Dr. Caligosto Loboto, DDS, was arrested last night for the suspected disappearances of 17 locals, ages 16 to 64. Only one body, that of auto mechanic Louis McNeal, 40, has been found. Few Details have been released, but sources at the local coroner's office have informed us that McNeal's Body had been brutally mutilated. Most of the injures sustained shortly before death had been inflicted to the forehead and mouth. His teeth and brain were missing and have not been located.**

**It is believed that Loboto, who operated the Shady Creek Dental Clinic, selected his victims at random. Most of his patients walked away unscathed. Some have even complemented his skills as a dentist.**

**One such patient, Mrs Mary Burninggate, informed us that she had been going to him for years. "He was a bit of a strange man, but he always did such a good job with fillings, and when my oldest needed to have his wisdom teeth pulled we went there of course. We couldn't afford to go to anyone else. When I first met him, he looked normal. But it seemed every year or so he'd have an accident, and then he'd just replace what ever part he lost. Honestly, my youngest kept asking him if he was turning into a robot!"**

**Others, such as Gerald Teglee, wished that there was someone else in the area. "I always felt a bad vibe when I was in there. Honestly, he scared my only son, Edgar,-**

"So, Edgar knew Loboto when he was a kid? I guess his mind must have been so scrambled by that breakup that he forgot about it."

**-so much some times. But without the money and time to drive all the way down to Burkly when someone had a tooth ache, he was the only choice. **

**Dr. Loboto was born here in shaky claim in 1916-**

"Wait, **WHAT**?! He can't be 90 years old! He looked about as old as Sasha! This can't be right..."

Raz quick pulled out the birth certificate. Well, it was the correct date. Caligosto Loboto, born to Isabel and Pippin Loboto on the 31rst of January, 1916....

Hands shaking, he put the papers back into the file.

"But.... How is that even possible?"

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

Lili stood in front of Raz, smiling. She looked beautiful in her deep blue summer dress, and with her long hair let down from its pigtails, she was downright stunning. Like always she was wearing just a touch of makeup, but today she had swapped lip gloss for delicately applied pale pink lipstick. The small silver locket that he had bought her for Christmas hung on a thin chain around her neck, its engraved oval catching the light of the setting sun.

Raz glanced down at himself. He was wearing his best suit, but it seemed so ragged and old compared to her dress. There was a single long stemmed rose in his hand, all of the thorns carefully trimmed off so he wouldn't accidentally hurt her.

They were in a golden meadow, standing in the shade a large oak that was the only tree around. In the distance colorful circus tents could be seen, and the sounds of happy people drifted faintly across the open space. A picnic was spread out on a thick quilt next to them, and Raz could smell the delicious scent of fresh bread and fruit.

He held offered her the rose. She took it and sniffed it delicately, enjoying its sweet scent.

Then, they drew closer. Raz could smell her perfume, not over powering like Kitty's, but subtle, like a soft aura of pleasant floral smells that hung in the air about her.

He wanted to say something, but he wasn't supposed to talk. It was strange that they were taking advice from Elka for something, well, anything really, but it worked.

Their green eyes locked together. They leaned forward, lips parting. Raz hesitated for a moment. Lili gave him a look.

The birds were chirping so loudly above them, Raz just had to say it. He didn't care that it might ruin the moment, or that it was stupid or cliché, he had to say it.

"Lili, I-"

Silence. The words vanished before he could say them.

It was as if time had stopped for everything but him. At first, Raz was angry, (this was, after all, going to ruin his date with Lili), but then it hit him:

This was a dream. And that meant...

The familiar wash of darkness came over everything, completely black like India Ink. He had the feeling that something was wrapping around his waist, dragging him backward through the nothingness.

"No no NO!" Raz cried in frustration. He didn't want to go through this again, he didn't want to see Loboto, and he did not want to have that drill shoved into his eye. It actually _hurt_!

Once again, despite his best efforts to resist, Raz found himself inside of the dental office. To his suprise he was standing next to the chair instead of strapped in it, the lights were on, and there wasn't a crazy detest hovering over him with a tool made to cause agonizing pain.

In fact, Dr. Loboto wasn't even in the room.

Like any sane person, Raz immediately began to search for a way out. There were no windows any where in the room, and the last thing he wanted to do was try the door until he knew what was on the other side. He reminded himself this was just a dream, and if he needed to get out fast, there was a brand new packet of smelling salts in his physical body's pocket. No need to panic.

Having settled on an escape route, he began a more thorough exploration of his environment. The white room was in pristine condition, and smelled ever so faintly of lemons. Almost all of the cupboards and drawers were locked, and the one's he could open contained such mundane things as individually wrapped toothbrushes and sample packets of floss.

However, one of the cupboards was empty, save for a single folded piece of paper.

Raz picked it up carefully. "Razputin" was written across the front in spidery letters, and it left him feeling slightly unnerved for some reason. He opened it and started reading.

**From the desk of Dr. Caligosto Loboto, DDS.**

**I apologize for not being around to attend to you tonight. I've had a particularly bad day today, and I must say I'm not in the mood for anything dental related right now. **

**Feel free to leave the room, the door isn't locked. Just don't turn around after you open it.**

"Erm.... Creepy, much?" Raz said aloud.

Raz walked over to the door. There wasn't anything else of interest in the room, and there wasn't much point in sticking around. As far as he knew, he couldn't wake himself up from these dreams until something A) killed him in the dream, or B) disturbed his physical body in the real world. He fervently hoped that tonight would be the second one.

He had his hand on the doorknob, but hesitated. He still didn't know what was on the other side, and the last two years as a Psychonaut had taught him not to blindly run into, or out of, rooms. He pressed his ear to the door for a moment, but didn't hear anything. He took a deap breath and turned the knob. There was an odd clicking noise, but the opened easily enough, gliding silently on well oiled hinges. On the other side there was a long corridor, nothing but barren walls and single green door off in the distance.

When Raz stepped though the doorway, there a loud, wet sounding thud behind him.

"Shit."

'_What's the harm if I just take a quick peek behind me...?' _He though nervously. This was definitely _not_ the way he wanted things to be going. He turned around.

Raz screamed.

A corpse was slumped in the dental chair, the head so horribly mutilated that their was hardly anything left of it. Gore covered tools were scattered across the counter and in the sink, and there was blood everywhere. Gallons and gallons of blood, more than could possibly be inside of a human being, was seeping across the floor, splattered across the walls and ceiling....

Something hot and wet dripped onto his head. He looked up and, to his horror, discovered there was blood leaking out of a crack in the ceiling. It flowed across the ceiling, slowly shaping itself into letters.

**I k**_**N**_**Ew **_**Y**_**Ou W**_**oU**_**l**_**d**_**n'T L**_**i**_**S**_**TE**_**n**

It was the last thing Raz saw before the ground beneath him gave way. Dozens of Nightmares latched their razor sharp, serrated claws into his flesh began tearing him limb from limb as they dragged him, still screaming, under.

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

The cracks were spreading.

It hurt so much.

Mind was on fire.

Pressure.

Hard sharp force digging into the cracks, making them bigger.

Mental defenses breaking down.

Couldn't stop it couldn't stop it couldn't stop it couldn't stop it couldn't stop it couldn't stop it couldn't stop it-

Wait. He could make it stop. He could wake up.

The repulsive oder of the smelling salts revived Raz as soon as he opened the case, dissipating whatever was behind the mental assault. Drenched in cold sweat and body still burning with pain, he forced himself upright long enough to turn on the light. He then collapsed, crying, into a heap on the bed, shaking from the pain and fear. He felt sick; it took all of his will not to throw up.

He closed his eyes. His mental defenses were already repairing themselves, sealing the cracks so well that it was as if they had never existed. His mind hadn't been breached. He was safe.

These definitely weren't normal dreams. Someone was using them to break into his mind, and Raz had a good idea of who it was. He'd never considered the possibility before, and he had no proof, but he was now certain that Dr. Loboto was not only alive and kicking, but a psychic.

If it was true, he was in a lot more trouble than he'd thought.

_)(_


	3. Ch3: Mission 1

**AN: **

**I've decided writing my author's notes like this looks less... annoying...**

**Short(er) chapter today. The first 2 1/2 paragraphs were written at 3:30 in the morning during a spell of insomnia, and I decided not to change it the next time I sat down to write. The random words "Pit filled with cheese dddddddddddddddddddd(...)" was directly beneath it, d's continuing for about two pages. Also, the Loboto and the Tetris nightmares are completely unrelated.**

**As always, missed spelling errors should be reported.**

_)0(_

**Ch3: Mission No. 1**

Somewhere, in the back streets of Los Angeles, a battered old delivery van was parked in the alley between a rather shady looking video rental store and an even shader looking pizza parlor. The van had been at one time solidly painted a depressing shade of grey, but now the paint was pealing off in great strips, leaving patches of rust the size of road signs exposed. The tinted windows were cracked, and the entire van had a way about it that strongly suggested it had never been cleaned.

Is there anything special about this van that would make a sane person describe it in such flowering detail? Of course there is. No, the van didn't suddenly explode at this moment, killing a lone drug dealer as he ducks into the pizza parlor to grab a bite to eat.

Instead, despite the van's abysmal outward appearance, it was one of the most sophisticated spy vehicles of its time. State of the art, seamlessly integrated equipment lined the walls, complete with mysterious blinking lights and dozens of colored video screens. Several cartons of half-eaten Chinese food were in the hands of agents and perched precariously by keyboard, filled the van with delicious smells. A thick shag rug had been firmly attached to the floor by means unknown, possibly as a joke, possibly because the first group of agents that had used the van had included several hippies.

Raz sat quietly in a corner. Under normal circumstances, he would have been barely able to contain his excitement. He was on a mission to track down a dangerous psychic at large in the streets of Los Angeles, one who was believed to be responsible for five deaths and several disappearances.

Five days had passed since that traumatic nightmare, and even though Raz hadn't had another, he was still reluctant be out in the field. Raz hadn't told anyone about it, mostly because if he did, well, he'd be sent to the loony bin. People didn't feel physical pain when they were dreaming, and even the psychic attacks that he had endured during training hadn't been nearly as painful. He had, for the first time ever, tried to talk his way out of it. If, during the mission, he dozed off and....

He really didn't want to think about it.

To make things worse, Dave Huron was group leader. The man was what you would call old school to the extreme, so by-the-book that the mere mention of Raz's early admission into the organization would bring his blood to a boil. Consequently, Dave didn't like Raz, and Raz didn't like him much ether. Every time the two were sent on a mission together, Dave found some way of preventing Raz from taking any part said mission. The last few times, Raz had found himself "guarding strategic locations", which had included an old stump in the middle of the woods, a large dumpster behind a retirement home, and a tinny video arcade in the back of an abandoned daycare center.

Actually, Raz enjoyed that last one. It had been a routine find-the-pyrokinetic-arsonist mission, the kind of mission Raz found boring, and Dave had somehow found a plausible sounding excuse too force him to stay behind, something about how the pyro seemed to be targeting places were she'd had bad experiences blah blah blah. By the time his exhausted, and slightly charred, team came back, Raz had progressed from not knowing how to play packman to beating the enigmatic "AAA", setting the new high score.

"Hey, kid."

Raz's attention snapped back to the present. He looked up to see Agent Asok Gandhi watching him. Asok was the second youngest agent in the van after Raz, and this was his first major mission.

"Are you going to finish that?" Said the ever-ravenous sixteen year old, pointing to the half-eaten container of lo mein in Raz's hand.

"Yes." Raz said before shoving some into his mouth with his spork. He liked Asok well enough. Asok's Mother, Jahana Gandhi, had come from India about twenty years ago as part of an exchange of skilled agents. Asok had inherited her amazing abilities as a psychic healer, and he hoped to follow in her footsteps.

"Oh." Asok said before returning his attention to a hand held gaming device.

Raz picked himself up and, still munching on his noodles, and looked over Asok's shoulder. He recognized the colorful falling blocks almost instantly, and quickly looked away. One of the most traumatic experiences he'd ever had while in someone's mind had involved Tetris, and he still had nightmares. He'd be running as fast as he could, then there would be these walls coming out of the ground, and then he'd be trying desperately not to get crushed by falling blocks, then- SPLAT!

Raz glanced around at the other agents in the van with him. Besides himself, Dave and Asok, Agents Thomas Marqui and Lana Sun were also part of the team.

Thomas Marqui was a Los Angeles native who knew the city better than any other agent, and was considered to be one of the leading urban explorers in both the psychic and normal communities. His short, dirty-blond hair complemented his hard grey eyes, and he look natural in both business suits and torn jeans and t-shirts. Raz and Thomas, after a rough start because of Raz's age, had gained a mutual respect for each other. Raz was a skilled acrobat, and the only other person on the team capable of keeping up with Thomas on runs "through the urban jungle".

Lana Sun's father had come from China to the states during the Cultural Revolution and married an American woman, much to his parents' displeasure. Lana was kind and slightly protective of Raz and Asok, and reminded Raz a little of Milla. Her biggest talent was her ability to find things and people that she had seen before, and her main job on the mission was to ensure that the killer couldn't go into hiding after they found him.

The doors to the van swung open, and Dave hopped in. He quickly unzipped a nondescript uniform and pulled it off, revealing an equally nondescript grey suit.

"Alright." He said as he pulled out a red tie, ice cold blue eyes scanning his fellow agents. "Everyone in street clothes?"

Everyone _was_ dressed in street clothes. Raz was wearing a pair of jeans, an orange t-shirt, a brown jacket, sneakers, and he had his hair spiked and held back with his favorite pair of orange goggles. Asok looked just like a collage student in kakis and a blue polo shirt, and had an old backpack full of medical supplies to lug around with him. Thomas had donned one of his many urban exploration outfits, and since his fellow explorers were in on this, no one would think twice about a man jumping from roof to roof. Lana had a pink blouse and a black skirt on. It made her look pretty, and with the addition of a contact lens over one of her mismatched eyes, no one would give her a second look. Well, they might, but not for that reason.

Dave gave a grunt of approval.

"We need to get going. Now. Gandhi, Sun, you'll stay back if there is any trouble. Hide if you need to. Marqui, I need you to keep a watch from the roof tops. Be prepared to block off any potential exits at a moments notice." Dave stooped to smooth out his greying brown hair.

"What about me?" Asked Raz. He was not going to be left behind again. He could take care of himself, he'd proven that years ago at Whispering Rock. What if Agent Marqui needed help stopping the guy?

"_You_ are staying to guard the van. I don't want to come back here to find the van striped of parts or stolen." Dave replied angrily.

Apparently, he was.

"But-"

"No 'buts', Agent Aquato."

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

And thus Raz, by now very fed up with being left behind, found himself guarding the van.

In the dark.

Alone.

"If anyone tries to jump me, I'll just run behind the van, turn invisible, sneak up behind them, and KICK THEIR ASS!" Raz said to no one in particular. "And people say I go into fights without a plan of attack."

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

Raz was bored out of his mind after the first two hours. He'd done everything that he could think of: crumple up the loose pieces of paper lying on the ground and set them on fire (fun), trying to levitate himself without using his levitation ball (bad idea), use confusion on the rats (very fun), Spying on people in the apartments across the street with a clairvoyance'd pigeon (Very, very, very, very bad idea. The mental scars would last for a lifetime. People shouldn't be able to bend **that** way.).

After about half an hour Raz settled on TK stacking some cans he'd found by a dumpster, just for practice. He'd started out building pyramids and then, after getting bored with that, started stacking the cans one on top of each other. It was hard, he never had quite figured out how to put something down gently, but he managed to avoid nocking over the stack. There was only one can left to add. Just one more can and-

Something, something too big to be a rat or a cat, moved in the shadows behind him.

'_What the hell? Did I just see that shadow move?' _He thought, accidentally drooping the can.

Raz stared into the darkness in the back of the alley for a few minutes. His heart was pounding in his ears.

"Must have been a rat." He said after a while. He was unnerved, but some rat wasn't going to spook him. They weren't like the tower rats around here.

He turned back to his tower of cans and, impossibly, the can he'd dropped was still floating in mid air, almost as if someone else had caught it with TK....

"Hey there, kid. A bit late for someone your age to be out, isn't it?"

Raz took a deep breath. There was someone with psychic powers and a creepy voice standing right behind him. Very, very, carefully, he turned around, again, to face them.

The figure of a young man was leaning casually up against the side of the van, partly concealed in shadows. Raz could barely make out the man's forest green hair and black leather jacket. The man's face was covered by shadow, but his pink eyes seemed to be glowing ever so slightly.

"Erm... How long have you been here?" Raz asked.

"Since about an hour before you and the rest of your agent friends showed up, Mr. Aquato. It is Aquato isn't it? It can be so hard to tell who's who when your eavesdropping sometimes..." The man said cheerfully as he stepped into the light. He smiled at Raz, like a hungry wolf smiles at a rabbit.

"You were here the whole time?" Raz said, slowly beginning to back away. Growing up in the circus had dangers that outsiders rarely thought about, and after a close call with a man in a similar situation.... He was lucky that the knife thrower had decided to grab an extra blade before the show. Raz refused to wear his leotard for weeks after that, and it wasn't until he began reading minds that he began to trust strangers again.

"Yep. You Psychowhatsits have been parking in the same place for the past few months while you look for that other guy. You know, the one who's been exploding peoples' heads? Of course, you guys aren't looking for me." The man said casually, reaching a pale green hand into his jacket and pulling out a small knife.

The can, which the man had been TK holding onto the entire time, smoothly floated over to him. The knife delicately floated out of his hand, and just touched the bottom of the can.

"You know," The man continued, running his knife across the can in a neat upward spiral, making a sickening screeching noise. "It's taken you guys long enough to finally leave someone to guard. I slashed the tires last time; I was wondering if I was going to have to take the engine this time. But now I have you to play with."

The man's smile grew wider as the can unraveled into thin metal ribbon.

Raz took a defensive stance. Running wouldn't be an option, he knew. The only way he was getting out of here was to disable this guy, and fast.

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

**RS:**

**Dave is in fact my default name for annoying, antagonistic (not always evil, mind) and Lawful characters that aren't Illithids. I *have* been playing too much D&D lately. **


	4. Ch4: Mission 1 part 2

**AN:**

**While browsing old fanfiction on this site, and reading old books, and watching movies, I've found something interesting. (Okay, I find it interesting. You probably don't.) In a long story, if the main character is cannon and male, they will be maimed at least once, most likely more, during the course of the plot. Why does this happen? I have a theory. By having the main character put through a terrible situation, like being beaten to a bloody pulp, the story teller creates some kind of emotional bond between character and the audience, so as the character slowly recovers the audience sticks around to finish the story.**

**Anyway, enough of me rambling. Thank you Blazichu for the nice, long review. I'm going to read back through after I post chapter five and try to fix mistakes, so if anyone does see any, let me know so they get fixed.**

**Now, on with the chapter!**

_)0(_

**Mission no. 1 part 2**

As an acrobat, Raz had always considered his small stature and light build to be a blessing. Combined with his natural agility, it was what allowed him to waltz, sometimes quite literally, across tightropes, fly through the air on the trapeze, and scramble up the sides of cliffs. He could reach places other people couldn't dream of easily, and even if he wasn't the strongest person, he could run circles around his enemies without breaking a sweat. When it came time for someone to break into a building during a mission, he was the one to do it. If there was a vent that needed to be climbed through, he did that too. He could hold his own in a fight if he needed to, and usually neutralize his opponent.

Now, as he was tossed around like rag doll caught in a hurricane, he was beginning to wish that he weighed just a little more. It wouldn't have mattered, but the thought made him feel better for some twisted reason. His attacker was the best telekinetic Raz had ever seen, as even his tutor at the academy (Raz was very bad at TK. Not the basic mechanics of it, like pushing and pulling and throwing, but he lack the finesse necessary for fine manipulation.) couldn't keep so many objects moving at once, and there was an increasingly alarming variety of knives rushing past Raz as he was thrown, repeatedly, into the wall behind him. Not thrown hard enough to cause any serious damage, mind, but it still hurt. Worse yet, it effectively destroyed his ability to concentrate. That meant no psyblasts, no confusion grenades, no pyrokinesis, and no way to fight back.

This entire thing would have embarrassing for an older, more experienced agent. Especially Dave. But because of his time at Whispering Rock, Raz fully understood that, despite his amazing talent, he would come across people who were better than he was at certain things, like Milka and her invisibility. He had just hoped they wouldn't be trying to kill him.

Finally, after a good slam into the ground that knocked the wind out of him, Raz came to a stop, pinned to a wall a few feet off the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted his jacket, which had somehow come off, lying on the ground by the van. His emergency transmitter was in the pocket, maybe it tripped...

Still smiling, the man walked right up to Raz, who flinched when the man ruffled his hair.

"Get away from me, you sicko!" Raz spat, hopping that someone, anyone, would hear him. The man, ignoring his cries of protest, leaned forward.

"Let me introduce myself. I'm Rupert de Locke, master of telekinesis and all thing sharp and deadly. Now, this is nothing personal, kid, but I was hired to send a message to Mr. Zanotto. A message in blood, if you know what I mean." The man- An assassin?- dropped his smile. "I'm going to cut you into so many pieces they'll _never_ find all of you."

With that, Rupert leapt backward, stopping exactly in the middle of the alley. A single, small blade, possibly a pen knife, shot past Raz's face, cutting his cheek just below his eye. Rupert was just toying with him, Raz knew, like a cat toys with a mouse before striking the death blow.

(Now, it must be understood that, for some reason as of yet unknown to modern scientists, being telekinetically picked up prevents most psychics from using their powers. There are certain techniques that allow someone to use a basic psychic powers while they are being picked up, like, say, a psyblast. As part of the mandatory training, which Raz had received upon joining the Psychonauts despite his amazing skills, Raz had learned a few of them.)

Clenching his eyes shut, Raz forced his aggressive mental energy into a single, unstable point. Creating a psyblast like this was extremely dangerous: it could easily backfire, which would probably kill him instantly, but it was the only way he was getting out of this in one piece. Besides, blowing his own head off was a better way to go than being chopped to bits, right?

Thanks to a combination of sheer will power, luck, and the spirits of desperation, Raz managed to get the shot off without killing himself, actually hitting his intended target square in the chest.

Unfortunately, the blast was much weaker than normal, dealing negligible damage to Rupert, who didn't even fall over. All it did was make him angry. The force pining Raz to the walk suddenly increased in strength. Raz couldn't breathe now, and he could have sworn that that creaking noise he had just heard was his ribs.

"Nice trick. It's been awhile since I've seen someone do that. You've had the advanced training, am I right?" Rupert snarled.

Raz could now only watch in terror as particularly large, serrated blade plunged into his arm. It tore through his shirt sleeve and ripped through his flesh, right to the bone. Blood poured out of the six inch gash, and the sight of it seemed to, in some sick, twisted way, put Rupert back into a good mood.

Rupert started laughing. It wasn't harsh, maniacal, cackling, cold, or any of those sounds you would normally associate with a person who's obviously an evil bastard. Instead, it was musical, warm, almost friendly; the kind of thing one hears when they're at the park on and someone's just told a really funny joke. It was one of the most frightening things Raz had ever heard in context, like catching a glimpse of something terrible through a crack in a facade.

Then there was a sickening crack. A brick had flown out of nowhere struck the assassin's arm. With a cry of pain Rupert fell to his knees, and, with his concentration broken, the knives dropped out of the air and fell to the ground with a clatter.

The force pinning Raz to the wall let up enough so that he could breathe, and he did, greedily sucking air into his burning lungs.

"HEY! Yes, I'm talking to you, loon." A voice shouted from the entrance of the alley. Raz herd the click of a gun cocking. "I'm giving you five seconds to leave. You've seen how good my aim is with a brick; I'm not going to miss."

The assassin seemed surprised. In an instant he had gathered his knives and was climbing up a fire escape, one arm held tightly to his chest. Raz managed, barely, to land on his feat when the last of the telekinetic bonds faded, but his legs wouldn't take his weight and he collapsed into a heap at the foot of the wall.

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

Raz watched the pool of blood slowly spreading across the grimy pavement. It was so warm, so very red even in the dim light. He was still in too much shock to register the pain, but he knew he had been hurt. Badly.

Footsteps. His rescuer carefully rolled him over. Raz could here the distinct sound of ripping fabric, and his arm was quickly bandaged with what he suspected was part of his jacket.

"About how much do you weigh?" A familiar voice asked. Had one of Raz's teammates come back to help him? "Between 36 and 40 kilograms?"

Raz couldn't speak. He was begging to feel the pain, and it was intense. His arm felt like it was on fire, and it was taking all of his concentration not to pass out. He also didn't know how much he weighed in kilograms off the top of his head.

"Grah... Nod if you weigh in between eighty and ninety pounds."

Raz gritted his teeth and nodded. Something stabbed him in the shoulder, and almost immediately the pain started to faded away.

"Thank you." Raz groaned as he was helped into a sitting position.

At first Raz didn't recognize the short man. Gone were the fish lips and the blotchy skin. His eyes were no longer as bulging, and the cataracts which nearly blinded them had been removed. His hair had been dyed at some point, changing it from a light blue to a dark brown color, and was obviously being cleaned more regularly. The orderly uniform somehow worn over a strait jacket had been replaced with a white polo and a pair of old jeans. A messenger bag, the same kind that Raz had, in fact, was slung over the man's shoulder.

But Raz recognized the oversized forehead and sour expression within seconds.

"Hey! You're Crispin!" He said in surprise.

"How observant. You're Razputin, I'm Crispin." Crispin Whytehead, former fake head orderly and sidekick to the deranged Dr. Loboto, said in an annoyed voice. "Anything else?"

There were so many questions whirling around in his head, Raz couldn't decide what to ask first. Was Loboto still alive? Where had they been for the past two years? Why had Crispin saved him from the guy trying to kill him? What the hell had he just been injected with? Why was Crispin even here?

Unfortunately, the only thing he was able to get out was "What happened to your face?".

Crispin looked like he had just bitten into a lemon. More so than usual, at least.

"I'd shoot you for asking that, but the gun's not loaded." He said, shoving the weapon into his messenger bag. "Do you have a first aid kit in your van?"

"Yes." Raz said, carefully standing up. Whatever he'd been injected with seemed to have given him a boost of energy, and he didn't feel sick or dizzy or anything.

"Do you know where it is?"

"It's in the foot locker against the back wall. There's bandages and stuff in there." Raz said as Crispin helped walk towards the van.

The doors to the back of the van swung open before they reached them. Then, much to Raz's alarm, Raz found himself being lifted off the ground. At first he thought that the guy with the knives had come back to finish the job, and began to panic accordingly. Crispin rolled his eyes and smirked.

"Don't struggle, unless you want me to drop you. I can't imagine you climbing into the van on your own, not with your arm like that. The effort would increase the bleeding, and you'd pass out and die." Crispin said in his most patronizing voice, the one that he normally reserved for Fred.

"So, let me get this strait." Raz said as he watched Crispin jump into the van. "You have psychic powers-"

"Yes. How do you think I threw the brick?" Crispin's voice sounded slightly muffled from inside the van.

"- and you're very skilled with them-"

"Yes."

"- and you didn't let anyone, not even Dr. Loboto know you had them-

"Wrong. He knows."

"You told _him_?"

"He tricked me into using them while he was around. It was a brilliant plan, really; the Doctor has a talent for manipulating people."

"But no one else knows?"

"Look. A good number, if not the majority, of inmates at Thorny Towers had psychic powers. Why do you think they fireproofed everything? Boyd has them. It was probably his inability to control his clairvoyance that made him insane in the first place. And the pyrokenisis, why, it only made him dangerous. They shipped insane psychics there from miles around, and most of the residents from the community.... Well, after living on top of a huge deposit of that rock..." The lights flicked inside the van. "... Your friends have no taste."

"What?" Raz said.

"There's a shag rug in here. An _indigo and yellow polka dot_ shag rug."

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

Raz soon found himself sitting on top of said shag rug, Crispin winding sterile dressings over his wounds. This was definitely one of the weirdest days he'd ever had.

"So... you still didn't answer my question." Raz said in attempted to restart the conversation.

"Little twerp..." Crispin grumbled. "Us 'normal' inmates, the people who the staff didn't know about, wanted to keep it that way. Otherwise, they had special solitary confinement cells for us upstairs, all tightly sealed with funny angles inside. Boyd ended up in one during that last year. Had a fit and tried to set fire to the commons, or something like that. He was screaming for days; I could here him from my cell. Didn't sleep a wink for two nights."

"So, why are you here?" Raz decided against pressing the psychic powers topic. It seemed to make Crispin irritable.

"My employer asked to deliver a message." Crispin said as he started to dig through his bag.

"Aha! I knew Loboto was- Ow!-" In his excitement, Raz had attempted to point at Crispin with his injured arm. "-alive! Erm... How long does the stuff you gave me last?"

Crispin fixed Raz with a surprisingly effective death glare.

"It lasts about half an hour. The stimulates will wear off first, then the pain killers. The Doctor gave it to me incase I was injured and I needed to get away quickly. I only had one dose, so don't make me regret giving it to you." Crispin returned to digging through his bag. "And of course The Doctor is still alive, I was talking in present tense. Didn't you notice?" Crispin handed Raz a small envelope. "Just read this quickly so I can stop wasting my time here and get going."

Raz cautiously accepted the envelope from Crispin. It was normal looking: small, white, square, with that funny pattern on the lining that prevented you from looking at whatever was inside. He carefully tore it open, and pulled out a neatly folded piece of heavy-duty, cream-colored stationary. With far more caution than was needed, he unfolded the piece of paper, half expecting it to explode in his hands.

'_Oh, God. He even rambles when he's writing...' _ Crossed Raz's mind as he started reading.

**Dear Razputin Aquato,**

**If you're reading this, Razputin, then Crispin managed to find you. Do you like the stationary? It's brand new!**

**(If you aren't who this letter has been addressed to, then why are you reading this? Don't you know it's rude to read other people's mail? Let alone pry it from the cold and dead fingers of the person who was supposed to deliver it, because I trust Crispin wouldn't just let you have it.)**

**How has your precious brain been lately? Have you been having strange headaches that won't seem to go away? Or hallucinating, mood swings, split personality, schizophrenia, anything? **

**The shell that protects your delicate, orderly mind is much thicker than they usually are, and it seems to repair itself when I try to pry it open. You're brain must be a very nice one, isn't it? I'd love to examine them both (your brain and your mind), but sadly you have prevented me from doing either so far. So I think it's about time we had a talk face to face. You can schedule an appointment for whenever you want next time you see me! That might be a few days, though. I've been running some very delicate experiments.**

**Dr. Caligosto Loboto, DDS**

**P.S.- I hope I didn't cause too much damage a few nights ago. I want to look at your headmeats while they're relatively intact.**

As soon as Raz finished reading the letter, Crispin plucked it out of his hands. Raz stared blankly for a few moments, before finally reacting for it. Crispin held the letter well out of Raz' reach, and Raz didn't have the energy to stand up and make a grab for it..

"I think I want to keep that." Raz said.

"And use it to prove that The Doctor is still alive? I don't think so. I have to be going now..." Crispin stood up, but Raz used TK to pull Crispin's legs out from under him, earning a second death glare, after Crispin face-planted onto the rug.

"Before you leave, could you get my jacket, or what's left of it? I have an emergency transmitter in the pocket. It's standard issue, inca-" Raz started to say before Crispin stood up again. "You don't want me to bleed to death before someone finds me, do you?"

Crispin let out a sigh, and, with an air of irritation about him, jumped out of the back of the van, returning moments later with a small black plastic box. Raz took it and pushed the button on the side. Nothing. Frowning, Raz flipped it over and opened the battery compartment, only to find it empty.

The two stared at the obviously sabotaged piece of equipment for some time.

"I think we're going to have to use the radio..." Raz finally said, setting the useless transmitter aside. Crispin pulled off Raz's goggles and plunked the headset on Raz's head. Raz picked up his goggles, and, to his horror, discovered that both lenses were broken.

"Oh, come on! I just got these things fixed!"

"Don't you have another pair?" Crispin asked as he began to fiddle with the radio controls.

"Yes, but they're kind of attached to my helmet."

"Mmmhmmm... What frequency do you use?"

"Ten. So you're just going to leave after you call them? Can't you stick around until they're actually back here and I'm not in any danger?" Raz was beginning to feel the drugs wearing off, and he did not want to be left alone right now.

"I don't want to be arrested. If I find out you're just trying to delay me, well... It's not going to be pleasant."

The radio hissed to life and Crispin stopped mid-threat. At first nothing but static could be heard, but then an unfamiliar voice crackled on.

"Did you see that! That girl's mini was caught in her belt and she didn't even notice! She just kept right on walking, with her thong showing and everything!" It was saying. Raz could picture some teenager drooling. How had he gotten on a secure radio channel? Unless...

Crispin, who had been listening with the other headset, turned one of the dials. There was more static, and then a loud crunching, smacking noise, like the sound of someone eating heard by someone else on the phone with them. Actually, now that Raz thought about it, that was exactly what they were hearing.

"Gandhi! Stop eating and stay focussed!" No doubt about it; that was Dave's voice.

"Stop! That's the right channel!" Raz said before switching on the mike.

"Hey, can any one here me?" Raz said. His voice was starting to waiver, and he felt nauseous, like he had just drank lemonade and eaten ice cream at the same time. He had to wait for a good minute or two before getting a response.

"Aquato?! Why are you on the radio! Do you **want** to blow our cover?! You're supposed to be-"

"Hey, someone just tried to kill me! I need emergency medical assistance ASAP, S-s-ss-o-"

With that Raz fell over onto the shag rug with a "fwump". The drugs had completely worn off, and it was as if the dam which had held back all of the pain had burst, and now it was flooding through his system. It wasn't as bad as before, but it was debilitating.

Crispin took the opportunity to leave. On the way out, he knelt by Raz and hissed "I didn't save you, a random passerby heard your screams for help and tried to shoot the loon, understood?" before hopping out of the van.

Raz didn't respond. Instead, he curled up into a little ball of agony and waited, helpless, for someone to come for him.

|_)-(_|_)-(_-*-_)-(_|_)-(_|

He wasn't aware of how much time had passed before he heard frantic voices outside in the alley. They were too muffled for him to make anything out, but he recognized them.

Then, suddenly, he was surrounded by people, all of whom were bombarding him with questions.

"What happened?!"

Thomas.

"Are you all right?"

Lana.

"Of course he isn't!"

Thomas again.

"Raz, that puddle out there- is that yours?"

Asok.

"That can't be his! There must have been a thug, Aquato must have psyblasted him-"

Dave. Even with his mind clouded by pain, Raz sensed something was wrong with Dave's thoughts. Raz just didn't know what.

"Dammit, Razputin, say something!"

Thomas again again. Raz had to say something before they started shaking him. That would hurt.

"H-hi." Raz mumbled. "It hurts."

"I think I could fix that..." Asoks said as he place his hands on either side of Raz's head. The pain suddenly stopped, but Raz still felt groggy and weak.

"Can you tell us what happened?" Lana asked Raz.

"Uhhhg. I was out there, and this guy, a psychic assassin or something, caught me off guard. He had all of these knives and tried to- to-" It suddenly dawned on Raz just how close to dyeing he had come. Crispin's sudden appearance and use of psychic powers had kept Raz from thinking about it, but-

"AND YOU'RE STILL ALIVE?!!" Dave cried, the color draining from his face as a look of alarm came across it.

Thomas gritted his teeth.

"Raz, did the man who attacked you tell you his name?" He said, slowly closing his eyes, as if he were bracing himself for an answer he already knew and dreaded.

"Yes." Raz said, confused. Did they know something he didn't? "He said he was Rupert de Locke."

"God be damned.... He's back." Thomas was visibly shaking as he said it.

"After three years of inactivity?" Lana said, looking very sick.

"Let's just get Raz to a hospital. I'm calling for backup. Gandhi, keep him stable until we arrive." Dave was as white as a sheet, speaking slowly instead of barking like he usually did. As far as Raz could tell, Dave had clamped down on his emotions completely, and the anomaly in his thoughts that Raz had detected earlier was gone.

Raz spent a long time thinking about that as they rushed to the nearest hospital. The weird thought he'd thought he'd detected were probably just a product of him being delirious.

Right?


	5. Ch5: It’s Worse Than You Ever Dreamed

**AN:**

**Well, I just learned that Huron is French for "Ruffian" or "Rustic". It also the name the French gave the Wyandot people, who, based on my limited knowledge, are the native peoples of the Ontario region of Canada. It's too late to change it now.**

**Only two reviews so far? I know people are reading this....**

**(Spelling reminder goes here.)**

_)0(_

**Ch5: It's Worse Than You Ever Dreamed**

Raz was about ready to check in his sanity and ship off to an asylum.

He had been trapped, for _five freaking days_, inside of a hospital room the size of a matchbox. It wouldn't have been that bad, except the room was completely white, right down to the doorknob, there were no windows, and the fluorescent light above his head kept flickering. The only color in the entire room came from the comics scattered on his bed and the blue PJ's he wore. That, and somehow he'd ended up in a room with some cranky old psychic hater. Raz was willing to believe that the bastard had plans to murder him while he slept; plans that would have been carried out if the man hadn't broken his limbs in a skiing accident.

Incidentally, Raz could feel himself being given the Evil Eye through the blindingly white privacy curtains.

On the plus side, he'd been sleeping well for the past few nights (His psychic-hating roommate was on a very potent sleeping aid, one of the nurses had told him.), and he was feeling much better after a few days of rest. The sheets weren't scratchy, either, which was always a good thing.

The door to the room swung open with a creak. A fat, blond young nurse with a mole on her chin, which Raz had learned was ironically named "Dorothy Mole", stood in the doorway, beaming. He liked her. She'd played board games with Raz almost every afternoon since he'd arrived, and that alone had kept him from going completely out of his gourd.

But today she didn't have one of the brightly colored boxes with her. Instead, she had brought something much, much better.

"Razputin! You have visitors!" She said in a sing song voice.

Raz's face lit up like a Broadway sign. So he hadn't been left to rot in this sterile white hell! He jumped out of bed and got dressed as fast as he could, carful not to apply pressure to his injured arm as he put it into a sling. The doctors had told him he was luck that he didn't lose any more blood than he had, and that someone had shown up and given him fist aid. Otherwise, he undoubtably would have bled to death before anyone found him.

Dorothy walked him out of the room, past the guard that had been stationed at his door, just incase the assassin returned to finish the job, down a long white hallway that only had a few nurses and a doctor wandering its length, and into the visitor sitting area.

The visitors area was far more pleasant than the rest of the hospital. The walls were painted an inviting shade of green, unlike the blinding white of the rest of the hospital, and there were honest-to-goodness _light bulbs_ in the tastefully color-coordinated lamps, which shed warm light across the room. It was empty save for an elderly couple, one of whom was sporting an IV, playing chess in the corner. They looked up at Raz as he entered the room, and he flashed them a nervous smile, and they smiled back before returning to there game.

Dorothy quickly ushered Raz through a door and into a smaller, privet area, and shut the door behind him. Almost as soon as he stepped inside, Raz was swept up his mom's loving embrace, her arms wrapped so tightly around him that he couldn't breathe, pressing into his wounded arm and sending searing pain shooting through his body.

"Razputin! I was so worried about you! When they told me you'd been attacked, I thought you were-"

"Mom!" He gasped. "You're hurting me..."

"Oh!" She let go of him. "I'm sorry, I forgot for a moment...." She smiled weekly. "The doctors said your arm will be fine in a few months, if you get plenty of rest."

Sasha, who had been sitting in a nearby chair, chose the moment to deliver some bad news.

"Unfortunately, due to the nature of your injury, Psychonauts' policy places you on mandatory sick leave for at least two weeks, and you will not be allowed to return as a field agent until the injury has completely healed." He said in a grave voice, adjusting his glasses as he spoke.

".... Months? I can't do anything for_ months_?!" Raz cried. It wasn't fair! He had followed orders, bad ones at that, gotten maimed because his attacker had been way out of his league, and now he was being punished for it all!

Raz, now acutely aware of the people around him after his little outburst, glanced around the room. Milla was relaxing in the chair next to Sasha, her blue-gloved fingers interlaced with his, much to Raz's surprise. On a large blue couch sat his dad, Augustus, along with his older sister, Gretchen and her fiancé, Douglas Paterson; and his younger sister and brother, Elena and Caspian.

"Where's the Coach?" Raz asked as he hauled himself onto a chair. As much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, he was already starting to feel tired. His mom, Laura, sat down in the chair next to him

"He could make it, darling." Milla told Raz. "He had his bimonthly Psychiatric evaluation today. He did ask me to give you this card, though."

Raz took the card from Milla. It had a picture of a little bunny with its arm in a cast on the front, with the sparkly words "Get Well Soon" written in bubble letters across the top. Tucked inside of the card was a long letter, and just by skimming the first few lines, Raz could tell that it was some a war story of some kind.

"Umm.... Didn't the whole "War Delusions" thing get fixed?" Raz said nervously.

"It did. The entire story did happen, but you still might not want to read it." Sasha said. "It's his rendition of how he fell off the side of a cliff during a foot pursuit."

* * *

It hurt Augustus to see his son like this. His boy looked so pale, so tired, like a cap had been put on his seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. He had a thin red line, the beginnings of a scar, just below the eye, and his arm hung uselessly in a sling, covered in bandages. The clothes he wore were too large, and hung lose on his slim frame, making him look even more sickly than he already did.

But Razputin had a strong spirit, and, despite his weariness, was able to have fun. The nurse had brought some board games in, and they all spent several hours playing Monopoly and Bingo, and otherwise just enjoying themselves.

Evening came around, and, with many tears and kisses, Laura took the rest of the family back to the caravan. Almost imeidentely after they left, the conversation turned serious as the remaining adults (and Razputin) planed their next move.

"Razputin, we were told you would be able to come home soon." Augustus said, his brow furrowed. "But I don't think that you would like spending your days waiting around while that arm heals."

Razputin nodded sleepily. Of course he wouldn't want to come home with his arm like that. He'd seen the rest of his family break limbs and sit around for weeks on end, with nothing to do but read and watch the others preform.

"Camp will be starting up again in a week, darling. You could come stay with us for the rest of the summer." Agent Vodello suggested. Augustus liked the woman reasonably well, but, sometimes....

Suddenly, a loud, monotone beeping noise, emitting somewhere from Agent Nein's person, disrupted Augustus' train of thought. The Agent looked embarrassed, and, as he hastily left the room, Augustus caught a glimpse of what had to be the squarest cellphone in existence.

There was a moment of silence, and then they continued their conversation as if nothing had happened.

"I would like for Razputin to come home and visit his family for a time. We haven't seen him in months" Augustus said. "We won't be preforming for a few weeks, and we will be in the area. We could drop Razputin off when camp starts."

"Does that sound good?" Milla asked Razputin. "Staying with your family for a few days?"

"Yah. Sound great." Razputin said, his eye starting to close. The poor boy must have been exaughisted; he was slumping in his chair....

"Your toxicology report just came back from the lab, Razputin."

Augustus, as well as everyone else in the room, turned to look at Sasha as he stood in the doorway, blocky cellphone still in hand. He looked worried, his brow slightly creased and lips forming a frown.

"You had them run a tox screen on me?" Raz said with a start.

"The pain you described to Dr. Eppes, well, it simply was not at all typical for that type of injury. We believe the knives were coated with a poison that interferes with clotting, and intensifies pain. While we still haven't identified it, we do know that you were injected with a mixture of drugs that temporarily counteracted the poison shortly after the attack. It probably saved your life."

"_Poison?!_" The word rolled off of Augustus' tongue like the substance itself, bitter and taste in his mouth. "My son was _poisoned_?"

"Mr. Aquato, I assure you that he's fine now."

"You allowed my son to be sent on a mission where _he could be killed?!_"

"Razputin was sent on a mission where he should have been fine. The extremely poor planing of his mission leader, as well as several direct violations of protocol that, once again, were not Razputin's fault, put him in the path of danger."

"Has anything happened to Da- Agent Huron?" Razputin interjected.

"Why, yes." Agent Nein adjusted his glasses. Every time Augustus had seen him, regardless of the situation, Agent Nein had been wearing sunglasses. "He has been suspended for intentionally endangering a junior agent."

"Good." Augustus grunted.

* * *

In a small, but pleasant, gated community just outside of Seattle, sat the home of the Hurons. To call it a mansion would have been an over statement, but the stone and brick building was large and grand enough that calling it a mere "house" did not do it justice. In the fading evening light, the beautifully manicured shrubs and immaculate lawn were picture perfect, and the flower beds dotted about the house would have made any neighbor envious. These feats of landscaping should not be attributed to the Hurons, but instead their gardener, who worked six days a week to keep the lawn in its glorious state, carefully mowing around the tastefully selected lawn ornamentation and the water fountain, watering flowers, and trimming trees.

In his home office, Dave Huron, now on day three of a three week unpaid suspension, was moping. What was he supposed to tell his wife? That the obnoxious kid that he'd spent months trying to stop from joining the organization had gotten him suspend? Unthinkable! It was bad enough that he hadn't been allowed to go back into his office to retrieve his possessions, but what made it worse was that _he_ had been the one to come up with that rule. Now important papers would be just sitting in his office, there for anyone to come riffle through them.

_**IT.**_

_**WASN'T.**_

_**FAIR.**_

With a scream of rage, he slammed his fist into the wall. It gave, allowing his knuckles to scrape past the 2x4 that lay beneath, and leaving sizable hole in the drywall.

He took a deep breath and slowly pulled his hand out of the wall, wincing as he saw the blood on his hand. Thankfully, he didn't seem to have any splinters lodged in his flesh.

'_This wasn't how things were supposed to have happened.' _He thought, looking at the blood trickling down his knuckles. He hadn't broken his hand, at least.

Dave pulled out his handkerchief and pressed it against his hand. Then, of all things, he started to cry. The crushing weight of all that had happened over the last few days, from getting suspended to loosing badly on poker night, came crashing down on Dave like a boulder.

He had spent night after night away from home, working hard to keep his organization strong, no matter how much that idiot Trueman tried to relax the regulations. He wasn't the only one, he had supporters in the upper ranks. He planed, and did everything he could, to ensure that only the agents with the appropriate respect for rules, and a desire to preserve the image of The Psychonauts, made it into the upper ranks. But, Trueman continued to surround himself with allies, and no matter how hard he tried-

Dave stopped sobbing abruptly. Years on the job had sharpened his senses to unexplained and unexpected sounds, and he had just heard the distinct sound of his refrigerator door slamming in the kitchen, which, coincidentally, was just down the hall from his office. His wife couldn't be home yet, she wasn't due back from her business trip for a few more days, and the cleaning people had come the day before....

Someone was in the house who wasn't supposed to be. Somehow, they had gotten past the community's own security system (which usually kept the druggies and other rabble out), past his home's state of the art security system, and was now raiding his kitchen. Odds were it was a burglar, but what kind of burglar with the sophistication and skill necessary to break into a house like this would make the mistake of slamming a door? Let alone raid the refrigerator? This person must know he was in the house with all the noise he had been making, punching a hole in the wall and crying like an infant.

Dave gritted his teeth and stood up, still cradling his bruised and bleeding hand. If he needed to, he could simply lob a confusion grenade on the person, or, more likely because of his mood, psyblast them. With skill and a surprising amount of grace, He crept, cat-like down, the hall, socks silencing his footsteps as he walked across the mahogany floors. Standing just in front of the door to the kitchen, he took a deep breath.

In one fluid movement, he threw open the door and leaped into the room, bringing his index and middle finders to his forehead as he did so.

Sitting casually on Dave's marble counter, eating a parfait made with Dave's fruit and yogurt, which was being eaten out of one of Dave's glasses with one of Dave's spoons, was Rupert De Locke. Rupert's right arm was in a cast, so he was levitating the parfait holding the spoon in his left hand.

"Wha- How did you get in here?!" Dave said, aghast.

"Oh, C'mon, Agent Hervon. Take a seat- I have ice for that fist of yours." Rupert said, telekinetically tossing a bag of ice wrapped in a dish towel towards Dave. Dave caught it, and pressed it against his injured knuckles.

"I should arrest you for breaking and entering, let alone the attempted murder." Dave grumbled.

"The attempted murder you arranged? Don't look so shocked. Although, I must admit, it was all very clever of you. With the anonymous message to kill any lone agent in the Los Angeles area, the 'leak' about the location of your group's favored parking space a few months back, how you got the kid to stay behind to guard the van, the faulty emergency transmitter, making certain none of the others were in telepathy range.... No one, not even the assassin who pulled it off was supposed to know that it was a targeted job, isn't that right? I only figured it out when you were surprised that the kid was 'still alive'. Lucky for you the rest of the diversity squad was too fixated on the kid to notice your little slip there." Rupert spooned some more parfait into his mouth while for Dave's response. When Dave said nothing, he continued. "What? You didn't know that I was still there? Neither did the kid and his little rescuer."

It took Dave a minute to process all this. He telekinetically brought a chair out of the dinning room and slowly lowered himself into it with a sigh of resignation.

"I'll listen."

"I'm finished. This is usually the point where my employer starts asking me questions, if you're so inclined."

"Then I have a question. The brat said his rescuer left a few minutes before we arrived when he was questioned. Why didn't you finish him off before we came back?" Dave demanded.

"I had my reasons. Mainly, despite what the kid might have told you, he did know who him saved from a horrible, messy death. I didn't get a clear look at him, but the kid called him 'Crispin'. Seemed very surprised to see him, almost as if- my, you're looking a bit pale there, aren't you? It's been awhile I've seen someone turn that color..." Rupert trailed off as he watched his employer's face turn a sickly green. "Does the name ring a bell?"

"Did either of them mention a doctor?" Oh no. The brat couldn't be right. That was a career starter (Or, in Dave's case, ender.) right there, if the brat was right...

"Why, now that you mention it, yes."


	6. Ch6: Visiting

**AN:**

**Hey, I updated! Thanks for the reviews, people who reviewed!**

**_)0(_**

**Ch6: Visiting**

The campground that the Aquato family was staying at had been divided into lots seemingly at random, with far too much variation in shape and size to have been done by a sane mind. One of these lots in particular, A42, covered more ground than all its neighboring lots put together, had its octagonal boundaries containing both an open field and wooded area with a small duck pond. The Aquato's trailers and two campers stat on opposite sides of the field, campers on the right, storage on the left. A tightly strung clothes line, hanging between two trees on ether end of the lot, wavered slightly as the breeze gently pushed on the clothes that had been so carful hung upon it. One of the campers, small but brand new and belonging to Gretchen and Douglas, lurked near the edge of the woods, its spotless silver frame catching the last of the daylight filtering through the dark green foliage overhead. The other, a double-decker painted in the red and orange colors of the Aquato family, stood by a huge slab of rock that jutted out of the ground, half-shading the hulking vehicle for most of the day.

It was the inside of that camper that Caspian, the already introduced younger brother of Raz, was desperately trying to straiten up their tiny, tiny shared room.

---------------

A long time had passed since Raz had been home, and Caspian really, really missed him. Raz wrote home every week, yes, but his letters kept getting shorter and shorter, shrinking from several long pages which told the family about all the crazy things and people he had seen, to sad little scraps of paper which had been barely more than a line or two telling them he was okay.

So, like most little brothers who idolized their big brother, Caspian really, really, really was exited to see Raz come home. Their parents had already set up Raz's hammock, and found the old green step-tool so he could climb into it with his broken arm, and Caspian had spent all day gathering up his True Psychic Tales magazines, just in case Raz hadn't read them yet. Raz would need something to do while everyone else practiced their acts. And, some of the newer issues even had Raz in them! Caspian really wanted to ask Raz about issue 746, because if Raz did ever fight a crazy guy who thought pudding was evil, it would have been really awesome.

Grinning happily, Caspian grabbed his dirty laundry hamper, which was overflowing with his faded hand-me-downs, hopped down the steps without dropping even a sock, and scampered over to the clothes line.

"Mom! Mom! I found all my laundry!" He said as he dropped his basket at her feat.

"Did you check the pockets, dear?" His mom turned away from the wash board and basin to look at her youngest child.

"Yep! An' I found a quarter and the rubber ball I lost last week!" Caspian beamed.

"See? I told you would find them if you picked up your things. Did you finish cleaning your room?"

"Nope, but I will soon!" Caspian paused. "How long until Raz gets home? Dad left to pick him up an hour ago."

She reached over with soapy hands to ruffle Caspian's hair, which was exactly color of Raz's.

"He'll be here by the time _you_ finish cleaning that room of yours."

-----------

_Thu-Tunk-Thu-Tunk-Thu-Tunk-Thu-Tunk-Thu-Tunk-Thu-Tunk-Thu-Tunk-Thu-__**THUD**__-Thunk...._

Raz was jolted awake when the car hit an exceptionally large pothole in the middle of the road. Blinking rapidly to clear his vision, the faded orange interior of his father's old sedan swam into focus around him. He found himself staring into the smilie face that he'd drawn (With a permanent marker, mind.) on the back of the driver's seat years ago. Repeated attempts to wash it away hadn't accomplished much more than to smudge the edges and create an aura of dark blue stain around it.

He straitened up, stretched, rubbed his eyes, then blinked some more.

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"_Really?_"

"Yes."

-------

After an evening of being jumped on by his younger siblings, hugged, forced to consume an insane amount of his mom's delicious cooking, catching up on family news, and the hugged and jumped on some more, Raz, now exhausted, made his way to his room. He hoped that they hadn't moved his stuff into storage, because he'd left most of his other things at his room in HQ. Barley had he opened the door to the camper when his younger brother jumped out of the darkness inside, starling Raz and causing him to fall off the steps.

"Hey, Raz! Raz!" Caspian was dressed in black-and-green-striped PJ's, clutching an arm full of comic books as he leaned out of the camper. "RAZ!" Caspian looked down at Raz as Raz gingerly picked himself up off the ground "Can you read to me tonight? Like you used to?" Caspian held out one of the comics.

Raz took the comic book (_True Psychic Tales 746: The Man Who Feared Pudding. _Why did that ring a bell?) from his brother. He hadn't been keeping up with them, not since he'd moved out, anyway, so this was something he'd secretly looked forward to doing. True Psychic tales was somewhat of a joke among the psychonauts. It was toned down and made more heroic for a younger generation, they told Raz, so that new recruits wouldn't know quite what they were getting themselves into when they joined.

"Yah." Raz said with a smile. "I try to stay awake for you."

A few minutes later, Raz was resting on a stool next to Caspian's bed, the comic open in his lap and a flashlight in his good hand.

"Are you sure you don't want to see the pictures?" Raz asked.

"Nah. I've already read it a lot, an' I know what all of the pictures are." Caspian said from on top of his hammock. He peeked over the edge at Raz. "I want you to hear you read it."

"Okay. On the first page, it says 'In an innocent looking house on an innocent looking street, a not so innocent basement is the lair to a mad man. Meet Mr. Alex Smith. He might live in your town, or be your next door neighbor, or he could even live in a different country than you. There is one thing you need know about Mr. Smith. There is one thing he fears, one thing he hates so much that he has dedicated his life to destroying it.'"

Raz fumbled the flashlight as he turned the page.

"'.... Pudding. He spends every hour of every day, even when he's sleeping, thinking of ways to erase it from existence.' And there is a nock at the door to the basement, and a voice says 'Honey, are you still down there?' and Mr. Smith says 'I'll be up in a minute.' and shoves some papers in his desk with diagrams of ray guns on them.'"

Raz paused and squinted at the diagrams. He's seen those before, he was sure of it. He looked up to see Caspian grinning down at him.

"Keep going." Caspian said.

"Erm.... So, Mr. Smith walks upstairs, and sees that his wife has made dinner. So, he goes and sits at the table, and she asks 'How is your job going?' And he says 'Peachy. Just peachy.'"

Raz turned the page.

"Okay. On the next page it says 'The next day.' and it shows Mr. Smith in a lab. He's messing around with test tubes with lots of different colored liquids in them. His coworkers are laughing and pointing at him. Then it zooms in on the the logo on his lab coat. Oh no! He works for Mrs. Puddingcup incorporated! One of the coworkers walks past and tosses a pudding cup right in front of him! Mr. Smith jumps and drops the test tubes he's holding. 'SMASH!'. 'Hahaha!' His coworker says 'Your such a coward Alex. It's just _pudding_.' Then all of the coworkers leave the room and Mr. Smith starts cleaning up the mess."

Raz turned the page again.

"So, Mr. Smith has a mop and is cleaning up the stuff on the floor, and the pudding cup on the table says to him." Raz cleared his throat used his best scary voice. "'_You don't have to put up with this, Mr. Smith._' and Mr. Smith turns too look at it with a terrified look on his face. '_You could stand up to them. We both know you could._' Mr. Smith whispers 'Shut up.' and slowly reaches for a pair of tongs. Then the pudding, which is grinning in the most evil way possible through its packaging, says '_They're all the same. Its people like them who got you stuck here in the first place!_'. Mr. smith picks up the pudding cup with the tongs as it keeps talking. '_You could destroy them. You could destroy them all! Wait- What are you- AAAAAAAAHHHH!_' Mr. Smith has thrown the pudding cup down the incinerator shoot! But what's this?"

Raz, who was getting more into the reading with each passing moment, accidentally dropped the flashlight as he turned the page.

"The pudding cup's words stay with Mr. Smith for the rest of the day and haunt his dreams. Suddenly, he gets up and grabs his coat. Meanwhile, at psychonauts headquarters, Agent Sasha Nein, one of the best agents in the psychonauts, is working on a machine when gets a call. 'It's from dispatch.' he says to the _gorgeous_" Raz had put more emphases on that last word, but what the heck? "Milla Vodello as he listens to it. 'There is a firestarter attempting to burn down a food processing plant.'."

Raz turned the page.

"And so, psychonauts team Alpha Five headed out. The brilliant Sasha Nein, genius scientist and skilled marksman.... Milla Vodello, the Psychonauts' best levitator and best dancer..... And Razputin Aquato, the youngest agent to ever... join... the psychonauts.... Caspian, did you want me to read this just because I'm in it?"

"Yup." Caspian started giggling.

Oh, he'd known that he was in True Psychic Tales. Heck, he'd even read the first issue featuring him when it came out, featuring him trying to help a very crazy cat lady get over the loss of one of her cats, and he'd gotten a laugh out of their depiction of him. Now that he thought about it, hadn't he fought someone who had believed that the foods he'd been developing wanted him to kill people? It made sense that they'd changed some of the details around for that case; Raz hadn't wanted to eat snack foods for weeks after that one.

Raz rolled his eyes and grinned.

"Haha. Very funny. So, they all climb into the jet and head out on their adventure...."

-----------------

Breakfast the next morning was awkward.

So very awkward.

Raz knew from the way the sun hung in the sky that he had woken up later than the rest of his family. He stumbled out the camper, still wearing his levitation ball print PJ's and sleepily scanned the area around him, trying to figure out where everyone was. His father soon found him staring out into space, and he was lead over to an oddly placed, rather badly battered tin table in the middle of the cluster of trailers. Raz noted the tin was already hot to the touch when he stat down- exactly how late had he slept in? Before he could ask, his mother slid a large plate of potatoes and omelet in front of him. He starred at it for a bit before remembering that he was hungry, then began shoveling huge bites of it into his mouth.

"Hungry today, son?" His father asked, amused. "I haven't seen you eat that much since you were nine."

"Thm hmsumtal fud wa turible. Th hd mu un a 'luquid dut' twu das." Raz mumble through a mouthful of food.

"Eeeeew! Mom, I can see Raz's food!" Raz's little sister Elena said from across the table, pointing and making a face as she did so.

"Don't talk with food in your mouth." Raz's mom said. "So, how has being a psychonauts been going? I get worried about my little boy while he's away." Her eyes lingered on Raz's bandaged arm.

"Eh. Its okay... I guess." Raz said.

"Razputin, have they been giving you a hard time?" Raz's father asked.

To say that Raz's father had approved of Raz's decision to join the psychonauts would not have been entirely truthful. True, he had allowed Raz to fly off on the mission to save Truman, and he had even happy that Raz aced the entrance exam (except for that one part...). But when Raz asked, a half a year later, if he could join the psychonauts full time, his father had nearly blown a gasket. At the time Raz had believed that the ensuing argument was caused by him needing to move into HQ. Raz had argued that they wouldn't be able to pick him up every time there was an emergency, so he really had to move closer. His father had said that they needed Raz to be home. In the end, it was because Sasha and Milla lived there, that Raz had eventually convinced his father to let him move out.

His Family had sent him on his way with food and blessings, but as Raz levitated onto the jet, he saw the most disapproving, saddest expression on his father's face. He hadn't forgotten it.

"Son...?"

"Oh, sorry. Zoned out." Raz said. "Well, a while ago they shuffled all of the teams around. Truman didn't like it very much, but I think the people who wanted it to happen called homeland security or something." Raz to another bite out of his eggs. "They must have gone over his head."

"Well, who are you with now?"

"Erm... They way they have it set up now is that there are twenty or so agents on a team, and they get assigned into sub teams based on what the missions need."

"And?"

Raz sighed.

"I'm being treated like a cadet. I'm still a full agent, I mean, I haven't been demoted or anything, but they won't let me help them. I'm being forced to stay behind and stuff all the time.

"And you know what's worse? Now that they moved all of the teams around, Oleander, Milla, and Sasha aren't even in the same sections anymore, and a lot of their friends are in the same situation. I think everyone's having a hard time with it. But I've met some nice people lately."

"Like this 'Hervon' man who nearly got you killed." Raz's mum said. It was such a blunt statement coming from her that it took Raz by surprise.

"His name's 'Huron'. And I don't think he meant to, mom. He's just a jerk, not a guy trying to kill people he doesn't like."

It was quit for the rest of the meal except for chewing sounds. Soon enough the rest of the family went off to do chores, leaving Raz to his own devices. Raz wandered around, doing his best to avoid his family until he found a large tree to sit under. He didn't know what kind it was, but it would have been a great one for climbing. It's think and twisting branches would have made great hand holds, and they were packed just densely enough to make climbing easy- if he could have climbed it, of course, with his arm the way it was.

Raz groaned. It was going to be a loooong week.


End file.
